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Monthly Archives: April 2007

Bravo to Kelly Dwyer for these gems: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/kelly_dwyer/04/30/inside.nba/index.html I love watching Dallas’ Jason Terry and Golden State’s Baron Davis go at it, especially while taking into context their respective career arcs. Both were drafted in 1999, with Davis going to a ready-made playoff contender in Charlotte that had hopped up the lottery. By his second season, he was starting on a conference semifinalist. Terry, meanwhile, had to toil away in relative obscurity with the Atlanta Hawks, earning an unfair label of a wild chucker on a bad team. The Hawks stunk, but it was Davis that boasted the chucker instincts, …continue reading

Apparently, Sebastian Telfair’s career with the Boston Celtics is over, and Telfair’s career is in some serious jeopardy. That being said, certainly SOME team out there will give him another chance. The question is – should it be the Knicks? As commenter “Hudson River” points out, the downsides are: He is another Shoot first point guard, but he can?t shoot. He doesn?t get along with Stephon at all. He could very well practice on the practice team, but whose minutes would he take? Not Marbury or Collins or even Steve Francis. The upsides, of course, is that he is 21 …continue reading

The hot basketball story of the playoffs is how the Golden State Warriors used a ?small ball? strategy to upset the host Dallas Mavericks in game one of their opening round playoff match-up. Golden State?s head coach, Don Nelson, sought to maul Dallas with the superior quickness of a smaller, more versatile line-up that could switch defensive assignments at will, effectively sticking Dirk Nowitzki with a body wherever he turned. The Warriors started a point guard, three shooting guards, and a combo forward at ?center.? Their tallest starter was 6?9?. Small, right? Sure, except Dallas wasn?t much bigger. They came …continue reading

Knickerblogger.net will be in full playoff mode until the 2007 champion is crowned. But before we let go of the Knicks’ forgettable season I wanted to take a brief look back through the window of five-man units. Because Thomas? played a lot of people a fairly high number of minutes I thought it would be worthwhile to look at how they fared on Dean Oliver?s four factors with help from our good friends at 82games.com. I?ll look at offense today and defense later. I thought looking at five-man units might be particularly interesting for NY because so many different units …continue reading

[UPDATE: http://myespn.go.com/blogs/truehoop/0-23-101/Introducing-TrueHoop-s-2007-Stat-Geek-Smackdown.html and http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/playoffs2007/news/story?page=Smackdown07] I was asked by Henry Abbott of TrueHoop to join an NBA playoff prediction contest against other number crunching analysts. I figure I have a head up on the competition, being that I used to run the blogger’s bracket. Nonetheless I took to the task seriously, using as much information as possible. Not only do I take into account numbers from my own stat page, but I also looked back at 16 years of playoff data to come up with my predictions. And wherever needed, I asked my 7 day old daughter to assist (yes yours …continue reading

The NBA’s dirty little secret is out, and everyone knows that teams are intentionally losing games down the stretch. Franchises that have been eliminated from the playoffs and held on to their pick (sorry Knick fans) can reward themselves by losing games down the stretch. And I can’t say I blame them. Athletes are trained from day 1 that winning is the ultimate goal (right Herm?) and a lot of players will resort to just about any means that accomplishes that goal. I’m sure Knick fans aren’t outraged when Malik Rose gets a handful of jersey when he performs his …continue reading

Besides one (fairly major) thing, tonight’s game really didn’t matter much to the Knicks. They do not own their draft pick, so it really doesn’t’ matter to them where they finish. However, it DOES matter to us fans, because, come on, you don’t want the Bulls to get a high draft pick, just due to schadenfreude – the joy of seeing them NOT happy. Tonight, in beating Charlotte on an Eddy Curry tip-in of a Malik Rose miss, the Knicks tied Charlotte’s record of 33-49. After the Knicks’ win, the Bulls lost to the Nets, locking the Bulls into the …continue reading